1999 Lexus Sc400 Base Coupe 2-door 4.0l on 2040-cars

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TMG still developing Lexus LS Sports 650 [w/video]

If you're going to make a super sedan, you'd better do it in Germany. That's where Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz do it, along with third parties like Alpina, Brabus and G-Power, among others. Deutschland is the epicenter of the movement, regularly churning out the most powerful four-door rockets in the world. It's also where one of the racing divisions for Toyota has been hard at work on the TMG Sports 650.
Toyota Motorsport GmbH started with a Lexus LS and turned it into a 641-horsepower, twin-turbocharged super sedan it revealed late last year at the Essen Motor Show. But though we haven't heard much about it since then, the team behind Toyota's F1 and Le Mans efforts are apparently still hard at work on the project.
Speaking with Lexus' own UK blog, TMG chief Alastair Moffitt revealed that the project started way back in 2010, shortly after Toyota shut down its F1 program and left the racing team with nothing to do. The 5.0-liter twin-turbo V8 was initially producing as much as 800 horsepower, but has since been refined to 650 so that it could theoretically be put into production and onto the road.

Lexus teases Frankfurt Motor Show concept... is it the RC Coupe?

With the teaser image of the concept car above and the announcement that Lexus will be premiering it to the world at the Frankfurt Motor Show on Tuesday, September 10, you know pretty much what we know. The Japanese luxury brand has decided to to say nothing more. Picture sleuthers have, however, suggested that it is a conceptual preview of either the RC Coupe or the hotter RC-F that will be revealed in Tokyo, or, less likely, the coming NX crossover - and that covers all the bases that we know of.
Along with that, Europeans will get to lay eyes on the GS 300h for the first time, the sport sedan powered by Lexus' 2.5L hybrid powertrain. You'll find a skosh more information in the press release below.

2015 Lexus RC F

I didn't get a chance to drive the Lexus IS F until 2009, two years after the car had gone on sale, but I still vividly remember the day it happened. Having piloted almost every other vehicle in the Lexus lineup at that point, I was stoked to finally get some wheel time in the V8-powered, flared-fender muscle sedan, but fully expected the car to offer a quick, sanitized and ultimately un-driverly experience. Lexus built well-screwed-together, comfortable, quiet, reliable luxury cars for the timid, right?
As it turned out, I was 100-percent incorrect. When the premium brand's lauded "skunkworks team" crammed that massive V8 into the innocent IS, and then tuned the thing for competent hot laps at Fuji Speedway (F = Fuji, if you haven't heard), they seemingly forgot every brand value that Lexus had curated over the previous 20 years. It was raw and loud, had fast-twitch reflexes and a penchant for power slides, and it went unyieldingly across the road surface like a racecar cut loose from the paddock.
As far as Ur- models and origin stories go, the IS F and Lexus F has a pretty compelling, if new, set. A backdrop against which the sequel, this 2015 RC F, must inevitably be viewed. Sure, the otherworldly LFA may have intervened as the second F model, but the RC carries forward an evolution of the 5.0-liter V8 thumper, some shared body and chassis constructions, similar in-your-face design and a ticket price that's squarely in the mix for premium buyers with a hankering to smoke tires.